All Day Long

SOS

There was my wife and I down at Pier 8 teaching a couple of our nieces how to fish.

Some say that some of what you catch in Hamilton Harbour is edible but after 100 years of the steel industry dumping coal tar into the water, I won’t try it. “Catch and release” was the term of the day. Besides, I didn’t expect us to catch much and I was right. We didn’t hook a thing.

A short distance away there was, what I suspect was, someone’s grandpa also showing another little one how to trawl. It takes patience but after a while, slim pickings inspire one to move on to another location where the fish are hopefully biting.

Grandad started pulling on the start cord of his Johnson outboard but he couldn’t get the thing going. He tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried, and tried and tried some more but it was to no avail. I’m sure he flooded it.

I could see inside of his aluminum boat that he had no paddles, and he didn’t seem to be pulling out a cell phone or anything to call for help. I felt so bad for them. The pair seemed to reside themselves to just keep their lines in the glassy water, and drift. It’s all they could do. Fortunately for them the current was slowly taking them ashore but in the old man’s mind, I’m sure that he was just cussing that motor something awful.

10 thoughts on “All Day Long”

Oh what a fate. Lucky for them that they pushed outwards and not inwards.
I accompanied my grandfather once to go fishing. But it was not fun. He thought I should keep quiet for talk scares away fish. Was not at all fun to sit in the old scow for half a day. Of course we got fish, but freshwater fish is good but extremely hard to eat. Legs everywhere.

I was told that too when I was younger; that bit about talking scares away fish. No one could explain how I was still able to catch trout while people in the same lake kept whizzing by in noisy motorboats while I had to keep quiet.

You could have been watching my dad out with Ryan and his cousins… I can’t tell you the number of stories Ryan has about being stuck in a boat with Grandpa and no gas, no motor, no paddles. Along with boating troubleshooting they have now learned how to pee in a bucket (not overboard because that’s how men fall in), how to signal for help and how to rope tow with a kayak. All lessons I hope he never needs to use but good nonetheless. 🙂